In conventional image forming apparatuses such as copiers, a cylindrical toner container (toner bottle) that is detachably attached to a main body of an image forming apparatus has been widely used (see, for example, Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. H4-1681 and Patent Document 2: Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2002-268344)
Patent Documents 1 and 2 disclose a toner container (toner bottle) that is set in an image forming apparatus body in a replaceable manner and that mainly includes a container body (bottle body) and a cap portion (held portion).
In a conventional toner container, when an opening area of a toner outlet of the cap portion and/or a flow passage area of a toner conveying path communicating with the toner outlet is increased, it may be possible to configure a shutter member of the cap portion so that the shutter member can slide in a longitudinal direction to open and close the toner outlet in synchronization with attachment/detachment operation of the toner container to/from an image forming apparatus body in a longitudinal direction, in order to attach/detach the toner container to/from the apparatus body with only a few actions.
In this case, however, the structure of the cap portion becomes complicated, and if the cap portion is formed by boding or welding two or more molded components together, the dimension of the cap portion itself may be deviated from a desired dimension due to variation in bonding or welding accuracy. Therefore, sealing capability between the container body and the cap portion may be reduced due to variation in a gap between the container body and the cap portion, or toner may be scattered due to positional deviation between the toner outlet and a toner supply port of the image forming apparatus body, which is a problem. Furthermore, when the cap portion is formed by bonding or welding two or more molded components together, mechanical strength of the cap portion may be reduced or costs for molds may be increased, which is another problem.
The present invention has been made to solve the above problems, and it is an object of the present invention to provide a toner container and an image forming apparatus capable of allowing for good operability of the toner container, ensuring adequate dimensional accuracy and mechanical strength of a cap portion even when the cap portion has a complicated structure, and relatively reducing costs.